Blank

There is this blank screen staring at me. Cursor blinking in a way that just seems so…judgmental.

I have a thousand and one ideas floating around in my head and I can’t seem to latch onto one that will make any sense as I attempt to write it down.

Funny. I couldn’t stop writing Sunday. Tonight I can’t start.

I’m fighting this absence of words like my kid is fighting sleep tonight.

Even if this is all I can do, it is something.

Some days are like this.

Tomorrow that cursor won’t mock me. My words won’t fail me. My ideas will seem to be in sharper focus.

Tonight…tonight I’ll just let what I have BE.

Becoming a Teacher

I had taken a bit of a break from writing over the past week.  I passed over ideas that I wanted to write about in the interest of Getting Stuff Done.

(My sad little internal cheer for the week: No time for distractions or discourse! No time for fun! Get Stuff Done!!!)

And I’ve been crossing things off my to-do list left and right.

(Though I definitely do not think I will be adopting my sad little cheer as a mantra any time soon. Blech.)

Be warned – this post is long and it’s been comprised of so many things that have been swirling in my brain over the last week and it probably should have been 20 posts instead of one. Forgive me.

But I happened to sneak in a few breaks over the past week (which I have found is good for keeping me moving – if I spend too long on any one thing, it tends to be counter-productive) and I saw a few posts. Let me catch you up on my reading:

Tuesday:

• Teri Lesense shared in her blog post inspired by the haunting resignation letter shared on Saturday’s Answer Sheet (which I would have missed in the flurry of activity here that day if she hadn’t shared it). Thank God that Teri keeps ripping up her resignation letters because we’re all better for having her voice and expertise shared out on her blog, on Twitter, at conferences, in her books and articles.  Her reasons for staying are all about connections and collaborations with her PLN near and far so we can all do better for our students.

• Christine McCartney shared her Letter of Resolution - an answer to the letters of resignation that have been posted widely. Not only does Christine vow not to leave the classroom, but she promises that she won’t be sitting back quietly and waiting to see what kind of madness we have to do/deal with next as a passive observer or innocent bystander. 

Thursday:

• Teri Lesense was writing in this post about her own optimism – that teachers are using best practices despite all the mandates and scripted curriculums out there, that things will change, and that This Too Shall Pass. And it is all because of her PLN…which is so much more than just a PLN. 

Friday:

• Beth Shaum made the big reveal of her video – and awesomely named blog –  about teacher retention. The first stat she shares is appalling – 50 percent of teachers leave the profession within their first five years of teaching. She offers the many and varied reasons why teachers leave, but then she shares what teachers have sent her about why they choose to stay. (Full disclosure: I am one of those teachers who submitted material to be included in her video.) It’s a beautiful and thoughtful video. I’m still heartbroken that she has resigned her current position, but I have no doubt that Beth will be doing great things for students (and her fellow teachers!) somehow, somewhere in the future. 
• This NYT op-ed (Teachers: Will We Ever Learn? by Jal Mehta) got shared widely in my newsfeeds on Friday by teachers and non teachers alike. The first time I read it through, I noticed that some information had hyperlinks to see the original source of information (this always makes me feel better to know people’s sources), but that others – notably this: “In the nations that lead the international rankings — Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Finland, Canada — teachers are drawn from the top third of college graduates, rather than the bottom 60 percent as is the case in the United States.” – didn’t have any such source attached. That particular statistic never fails to get me angry because I have yet to see where it has come from. It’s a maddening piece for a zillion different reasons, many of which I will probably never write about. I love the idea of treating teachers as professionals – something I truly believed we are – and I’m all for the idea of more education and mentoring and prep before we’re certified (though there are some serious worries about what might happen if this the development of this hypothetical new certification system were put into the wrong hands).

Saturday:

• Katherine Sokolowski wrote this amazing blog post and poem about why she chooses to stay in the classroom and teach – a post inspired by Beth’s video. Oh, Katherine…you write what I’m thinking before I ever get the chance to think it through – and so much better than I would. 
  

Sunday:

• Sarah Mulhern Gross’s excellent post “You’re Too Smart to be a Teacher!” was a direct response to the NYT op-ed shared above. It hit home. Maybe a little too close to home.

Confession time: I was one of those people who resisted the idea of teaching – never even gave it a thought – because I was “too smart” to go into teaching. It hurts to even type that. I don’t know where the attitude came from. Certainly not my nurse mother and minister father who have the utmost respect for teachers. I loved – and still love – my  teachers. I thought the world of them.

Perhaps it’s the fact that I had my heart set on medicine from the time I was young. Perhaps it’s because no one ever suggested teaching to me. Perhaps it’s because I observed enough about how teachers were treated by their students and the parents and the tax-paying public and the politicians already back then that I never ever thought about it as a possibility for me.

Teaching wasn’t even something that crossed my mind until I had to figure out (after I was married) what I was going to do with my life. After I decided I didn’t want to go to med school. After I didn’t get into a physician’s assistant program. After I decided I didn’t want to relocate to do pharmacy school. After I dropped out of nursing school when I realized I didn’t have the personality to sit back and rely on others making decisions. 

Bless my husband’s patience as I sought to “find myself” in those years after I graduated from college. I was looking for something to do to augment my part-time pharmacy technician’s wages and came across an ad for emergency substitutes in the three neighboring school districts where I lived. You needed clearances and a bachelor’s degree. I could do that. I applied and was added to the sub rolls and the calls came in.

I learned quickly that unless I was called to substitute for the elementary librarian that I did not have the stamina to spend that many hours with the same group of students that were much smaller in stature (not in personality) than me. I’d come home feeling beaten and exhausted. (Elementary teachers, I thank you a thousand times a day that you can do that magic you do day in and day out – I cannot.)

But on those days when I was teaching at the middle school or high school, I couldn’t feel more enlivened. Not only did the bell ring every 45 minutes or so and bring me a fresh group of students, but I had the most engaging conversations! At least, I did when I didn’t get left to supervise worksheets or videos or tests.

I still didn’t see myself as a teacher. This just seemed a nice way to make some extra money until I decided what I was really going to do. A blip. And not anything to share with my alumni magazine at Franklin and Marshall about what I was doing.

I did sub in a high school English class one day and taught one of the many iterations from literature of Dr. Faustus. I had a short period of time to review the teacher’s plans before the kids came in, but I was more concerned with how they might be able to relate to the plot. What would I have sold my soul for in high school? It only took me a few seconds to come up with an answer since I was sitting at the teacher’s desk in the same room where I had taken English classes as a high school student: a prom date. (Thankfully Satan never came by to offer such a deal…) I shared my story several times over that day and gave them some time to think and talk and write before they read to see what Faustus would have sold his soul for.

That story might have just melted into my personal history and been forgotten had I not run into the teacher a week or so later when I was subbing again. She told me she was impressed with what her kids could tell her about the assigned reading when she returned and then asked me over lunch what I was certified to teach. She looked surprised when I said, “Nothing.” She may have been the first person to ever suggest that I consider going into teaching. I don’t even remember her name, but I think I owe her eternal thanks for helping me find who I was.

All of a sudden I looked back over everything I had done over the last umpteen years. I stumbled across a memory of me playing teacher while my mom was at some meeting or other that I had to tag along for. I remembered helping friends study, making practice tests, sharing notes, tutoring classmates, commenting on papers, looking for extra resources that might be useful, recommending books, training new pharmacy technicians…

It was though I was seeing my past, present, and future through new glasses. Everything seemed so crisp and clear where before it had seemed kind of fuzzy.

I registered for courses to start working on my teaching certificate soon afterwards.

At age 28, I got my first full-time teaching position and I learned that there was so much more I needed to learn. I wished that I had more mentoring. I wished I’d had more preparation. I think I was surprised by this (I’m not sure why – perhaps I still thought that teaching wasn’t going to be that hard?), but I wasn’t sure what to do besides talk to my colleagues about how I could handle some things better and to buy lots of professional development books and work from there. Still, it felt lonely in that corner classroom. I was frustrated in June at the end of the year for a thousand reasons – and I worried about whether teaching would get any easier.

After a year there, I switched schools and soon afterwards became a mom. I had a teacher that I co-taught one class with and just being in the same room with her gave me the opportunity to learn from her. That opportunity and excuse to talk to one other adult who had been teaching longer than I had was so helpful.

I started grad school the summer of 2006 and felt like I had expanded my opportunities for improving as a teacher. I already had figured out after two years of teaching full time that the path to becoming a good teacher wasn’t going to be easy and that I wouldn’t just be able to figure it out for myself. I learned over the next couple of years – and I gained new mentors that I’m so glad continue to offer their insight and expertise.

In 2009, I stumbled across two places that would become my lifeline and introduce me to the rest of my PLN: the English Companion Ning and Twitter. My world opened up in ways I cannot begin to explain. I asked questions and got answers from people – people who had more experience and knowledge than I did. I tried new things. I had my failures and successes, but I had a place to think and reflect and learn how to do it better next time. I acquired – and continue to acquire – new mentors and friends. I participated in chats and collaborated on projects. I read and listened and followed blogs and went to conferences and even decided to expand my opportunities for growth even more and applied to be a part of the ISI in the summer of 2010 at our local National Writing Project site – the Capital Area Writing Project.

All of it I did to become a better teacher for my students because I knew that I couldn’t figure out how to be the teacher they needed on my own.

It’s the most difficult job I have ever had. I make a million decisions every day about a million different things that happen in my classroom. There is no standardized list of what to do that works like a magic wand for all students. There is no guide for every scenario that comes your way. There is no easy answer for every curveball heartfelt questions you could get asked. You learn as you go, sometimes through trial and error, always through reflection.

It is the most rewarding job I have ever had. I have heard people call teaching high school a “thankless job” but I’m not so sure I agree. I got a lovely thank you email from a student on Friday night after she finished reading a book I had recommended to her and a typed letter from a former student left for me on my desk the other day after school thanking me for my encouragement and support. I save the tangible thank yous (what my son and I call xoxos) for moments when I need a lift – but I get thanks of less obvious varieties. The drop in to look for a book. The smile on a face when something I said made something click in their brains. The request for another book recommendation. The heartfelt curveball question. The fifteenth draft of their paper. The sharing of a poem or article. Teenagers aren’t always good at saying thanks, but they know how to show it.

And when I look at my students’ faces, I know that I have a responsibility to them as much as to myself to keep getting better because I still have so much to learn. It’s my way of showing them thanks – and thanking the teachers and mentors who have taught and continue to teach me.

There have been more than enough things that have worn me down over the years that I have written my own letters of resignation – thankfully all ripped up and thrown away when I realized that working with students is the only job I can truly imagine for myself.

Why I stay is for my students. Why I stay is also for me. This job is who I am and I am proud to be a teacher.

For the Love of Poetry

I feel like I have been a good day or two behind on everything this week, so I was grateful that Katherine Sokolowski shared this post from Teri Lesesne in my Facebook feed this morning. I might have missed it otherwise – it’s from yesterday.

This came after an early morning poetry binge (Thank heavens for the internet allowing me to be introduced to all manner of new poets all the time!). So when I got to this part in Teri’s post, my heart fell:

As we celebrate National Poetry Month, I once again recall the words of my friend and former colleague Bob Seney who commented that poetry made him smell formaldehyde. It is about dissection. Call it close reading, but it is picking apart text. At the end what remains? A bunch of pieces.

Formaldehyde.

Yep. I know that smell when it comes to poetry.

It killed my love of poetry until I reached GRADUATE SCHOOL.

Sure, I enjoyed listening to my dad reciting poems – he does that a lot – but there wasn’t a chance in anything that I would be picking up poetry to read on my own. No way, no how. I read what I had assigned to me in my classes and I went through the motions to make my teachers happy, but there was no love.

So it’s no surprise that I offer this poem to my students when I start studying poetry with them.

This poem certainly offers me a chance to introduce Billy Collins to my students, but I share it so that I can make a confession.

I always thought the them in the poem was teachers.

And as a teacher, I fear that them could be students who don’t want to wonder.

That’s the key to loving poetry: to be willing to wonder. To appreciate the sound, the feel of the words and wonder what they might mean when they are put together this way. To link what you know to what’s there on the page or the screen or your headphones. To roll around in the possibilities and appreciate that they can be just like Schrödinger’s cat: that the possibilities are all still possible as long as you don’t look to see what someone else says it means and all other possibilities go bye-bye.

I guess what I do when I read poetry technically is close reading, but close reading feels so distanced and clinical that I have a hard time viewing what I do when I read poetry. I do examine the language. I do look up words that I don’t know or don’t know well. Sometimes I annotate – but that’s only because I love to see what changes from one reading to the next.

Teaching students how to do this is tricky. Wonder and fascination cannot be taught as a step-by-step how-to list. Students need to find their own way and what we offer them as teachers (and hopefully lovers of poetry) are suggestions, things to consider.  A tourist’s guidebook rather than a rigidly scheduled itinerary.

Readers need the right to meander, find what they like, what moves them – what leads them to wonder.

So I introduce them to Billy Collins and Taylor Mali Michael Salinger, Sara Holbrook, and Sarah Kay. We page through our textbook and anthologies. We look at the Poetry Foundation’s poetry app on our handy-dandy devices. I share the New York Times Learning Networks Poetry Pairings and The Writer’s Almanac. I know when they’ve found what moves them because they stop looking.

What moves them might not be what moves me. But when they find what does, it’s less about what to do and more about how to explain what they are thinking.

It took me years to get the stench of formaldehyde off those poems I have found I actually loved. Be careful what you do, teachers. Your mark can be left – for good or for ill – for years after they leave your classroom.

Broken Hearted #Slice – 31 of 31

It’s Easter. It’s the last day of March and the last day of this challenge for 2013.

Those things are good.

Other things have not been so good.

Things like my nephew telling me at the bookstore this afternoon that he can’t really pick any books to read if they don’t have AR tests for them at school broke my heart. It’s a new program for his school this year and they are supposedly going easy on them. You need to earn a certain amount of points from the tests each marking period – no talk of Lexiles yet, but he told me he was docked points for reading something his teacher thought was too easy for him.

He’s not reading much these days outside of what he has to read for those tests. And he’s not doing that with much enthusiasm.

This change in him makes me sick.

If you’d seen this kid read before now – devoured three or four books when he’d stay with us for a weekend – you’d be sick, too.

I mentioned to him that there are authors who have flunked the AR tests for the books they have penned. He didn’t seem all that surprised by this.

That makes me sick, too.

He went home with two new books that likely won’t get tested. Something tells me his district hasn’t paid for tests for them yet. They’re too new. Maybe that means he can just enjoy them…

Sunshine #Slice – 30 of 31

I should be grateful that my plan for the day got all messed up.

I was going to stay inside all day and cross some more work off my to-do-list – with one outside trip to get a replacement driver’s license. It was supposed to be one quick trip, barely long enough for me to bother firing up my audiobook.

Turns out that I had to drive a bit farther to get that license. I managed to log a couple more hours of my audiobook and made a couple of side trips to acquire a couple of sweaters and a pair of dress shoes.

But what I loved more than anything was being outside in the beautiful sunshine. In the car, I felt like one of the cats, stretching to where the sun was brightest to feel it on my skin.

Oh, Sun, how I have missed you!

By the time I was home, I could feel that I was smiling (Amazing what kind of effect the spring weather can have on you!). I was able to stay outside for a bit longer to witness my son riding his new bike.*

I can’t say I got as much done as I would have liked, but I did cross that one big thing off.** And I recharged a bit.

Win-Win.

*That ended in a bit of a wreck with a kid who was less than happy about his newly acquired “wounds” – until I reminded him of our conversation the other night about another scrape that had scabbed over. I told him then that he was becoming part dragon. His eyes grew big and he grinned that, “That means I’m part cat!” I guess he does listen to me and my silly rants to the cats about how they are dragon descendants. He doesn’t necessarily remember to turn his bedroom light off or to put his toys away when I tell him to, but he remembers about how cats are evolved dragons…go figure.

**It’s far better to cross this off than to say, “Well, you see, Officer, I don’t exactly have my license. As soon as I get to Harrisburg and get it reprinted, I’ll let you see it…”

One Focused #Slice: 29 of 31

I have found myself wasting minutes here and there lately – a game of Bejeweled Blitz or Color Grid on my phone, a bit of web surfing, scrolling through Facebook and Twitter.*

It adds up over time.

And I don’t have time to waste over the rest of this break.

The big challenge is that I need to use my computer and the internet to do so much of what needs to get done that I needed to find a good way to stay focused on the tasks at hand.

So I did a bit of research and found a couple of apps and extensions for my computer and my smartphone so that I didn’t need to worry about even being tempted.

I like Chrome because it has all kinds of handy extensions. The one I installed today is called Stay Focused. This web app allows you to set allowed sites and blocked sites as well as time schedules or time allowances for being on the sites you’re not supposed to be on. There’s a bonus Nuclear Option that turns off access to everything other than allowed sites for a set period of time. I set the Nuclear Option for an hour this afternoon and by the time that hour was up, I hadn’t even bothered looking to get on other sites because I was so busy doing what I needed to get done. And I set my blocked sites time allowance for 10 minutes a day between 7 AM and 9 PM – all I did were three quick checks on FB and I am down to 5:30/10:00 minutes. Not too bad.

I didn’t want to be tempted to fiddle with my cell phone (a Droid) either. So I set up a couple of things to keep distractions to a minimum.

One that I had already is Scharing Schedule-A-Ring. It sets schedules for when your phone will ring, vibrate, or stay silent. It’s brilliant and has never yet let me down.

Another one I had was Simply Noise – it is a simple-to-use white/pink/brown noise generator that gently blocks out distracting noises around you. This mobile app is incredible to have handy. I have recommended it and it’s associated web app to students and friends.

The last one was a new one. It’s called Stay Focused. You can set it up to turn off text messaging or apps or phone calls for a set amount of time or for a scheduled time by day. Since some apps might actually be helpful to leave on, you do have the option to turn off the apps you want to turn off.

So how did it work? I spent about four hours hunkered down doing work – finishing up continuing ed credits to renew my pharmacy tech certification (which I had forgotten was expiring until about two weeks ago). I managed to get 12 credit hours done in that time. Not too shabby.

Bonus focus app: I’m writing this on Write or Die’s web app right now. I set the timer and how long I wanted my post to be and I didn’t have to worry about hearing that awful noise once because I powered through and wrote until I met my goal. Funny. I more than doubled what I intended to write and I haven’t slowed down yet.

Surely I’m not the only one who has this problem with getting distracted…am I?

*Okay. Facebook and Twitter aren’t always time-wasting activities. Sometimes it’s purposeful and useful reading and interacting with others. Good learning experiences. The time-wasting scrolls are all about finding Grumpy Cat posts and seeing if anyone responded to that post I wrote five minutes ago. Seriously. I don’t need to do that.

The Thumper Rule #Slice – 28 of 31

How many of you have seen something on the internet today that was negative about something? You know, where someone who didn’t like or didn’t agree with something.

Okay. You can put your hands down now.

Now how many of you have seen something posted on the internet today that was downright mean? I don’t think I need to define that, right?

It could be a book review or a Facebook post or one of those pesky anonymously posted comments on a news story.

How many of you have seen more than one mean post? How about 10? 20?

How many of you have lost count?

It seems so easy to post things out into the great wide interwebs without much concern about who reads it or how it might affect them. Or how it affects how people see the person who posted it – especially if they were brave enough to post it under their real name.

I was thinking about writing models yesterday and how they help us determine the rules and the form and the nuances of writing in various forms that are new and unfamiliar to us.

Today I couldn’t help but think about how whatever we put out into the world via technology is a potential model for someone else. Quite possibly someone we’ll never even know read our post. Probably someone we’ll never ever meet.

With each piece we write and share, we throw something out to a greater body of work available that helps through some magical process to create standards and expectations for good writing. And that idea of “good” covers all aspects of what gets posted – the clarity of ideas, the style, the tone…

The tone. The attitude of the writer or speaker as conveyed through word choice and/or pitch of the voice.

And this is where I come to the subject of my post: The Thumper Rule.

I spend time talking to my students about how they interact – and how they should interact – with others online. I know it’s got to be short and memorable and here’s what it is in a nutshell:

It’s really that easy. It’s another version of the Golden Rule – and quite frankly, we need as many versions of that to teach our kids as we can find. Like this one:

I remember seeing a version of this sign at a diner when I was in college and thought it was a brilliant rule. Simple. Brief. To the point. Leave your bad attitude at the door.

BE NICE OR LEAVE. 

Good rule.

 

But the world doesn’t always operate like this.

And the internet definitely doesn’t.

(Unfortunately.)

And some days it feels like my students don’t have a lot of positive role models for their online interactions.

And what happens when the internet meanness and real life collide? Well…that is apparently uncomfortable for people who are old enough that they once didn’t have an online to be mean in. Or so I’ve been told.

I remember someone I was standing with in line for taxis on the last day of BEA telling me about how there were bloggers who were uncomfortable sitting with authors at the BEA Blogger Convention breakfast because they ended up sitting with authors whose works they had panned.

Those uncomfortable bloggers might very well have been the same people who wrinkled their noses and were tweeting furiously when the keynote speaker Jennifer Weiner said, “But there’s something to be said for talking up the things you love instead of talking down the things you hate.”

(No nose-wrinkling from me. There has never been any point in writing a negative review of a book. There’s an audience for every book. Who am I to turn people away from them? Especially when I can promote the books I love (which is so much more inviting to write anyway) – and it gives more than enough information for any reader to determine if he or she would want to read the book. But…I’m getting away from myself…)

What made those bloggers uncomfortable was a realization that their words might have an effect on the person they’re writing about.

So what happens with kids when they encounter the target of their meanness face-to-face in school? Do they feel that same sense of discomfort? Do they have any kind of realization of what those words meant to the other person? Do they feel embarrassed enough to sit quietly and hope that no one realizes who they are and what they have done?

I guess those answers differ with the students in question for a whole host of reasons.

But we probably aren’t going to know what’s getting posted online unless one of the students tells us. We’ll just see what happens in front of us in school. The reality is that we need to prepare them for whatever might come their way – the good, the bad, and the ugly.

So we need to prepare students for what to do when there is conflict. What’s acceptable and what’s not. How to discuss/argue respectfully – without attacking the other person. How to have good manners, exhibit good sportsmanship, and know how to say, “I’m sorry.”

I’ll be honest here: I’m a work in progress and expect I will be all my life. I make missteps and say things without thinking that I wish I hadn’t said. When I do, I make every effort to apologize. But online, I take great pains to reread what I write and think about the Thumper Rule before I hit POST or PUBLISH. Once it’s out there, you can’t take it back.